Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos. n. º 6 ( 1998). pp. 9 - 23

FILLING THE BLANK PAGE: A COMPARISON OF CARSON McCULLERS' WE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER AND

JERZY KOSINSKI'S BEING WERE:

CONSTANTE GONZÁLEZ GROBA

Universidad de Santiago de Compostela

Although the term intertextuality was coined in the 1960s, 1 the existence of the

phenomenon is at least as old as that of texts. Man y theorists believe that no text exists

as a closed, self-sufficient system, that intertextuality is the very condition of literature ,

that each text is woven from the threads of other tcxts, whether the authors are conscious

of it or not. 2 There are two basic reasons for this belief: 1) every writer is a reader of

other tcxts befare he or she becomes a creator, so that every text is necessarily permeated

1. The term was first used by Kristeva in her essay «Bakhtin, Je mot, Je dialogue et le roman,» in Critique 239 ( 1967), pp. 438-65, trans. Alice Jardine, Thomas Gora and Léon S. Roudiez as «Word, dialogue and novel», in Toril Moi, ed. The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Taking Kristeva's concept of intertextuality as limited to the actual presence in a text of fragments of anothcr text, Genette proposed the more adequate term transtextuality (textual transcendence), a term which includes everything, either explicit or Iatent, which connects one text to others (Still and Worton 22).

2. Befare the days of structuralism, when the term intertextuality did not even exist, theorists expressed their belief that individual literary works are inseparable from the literary current that precedes it. In 191 3 John Macy wrote: «Literature is a succession of books from books. Artistic expression springs from life ultimately but not immediately. lt may be Jikened to a r iver which is swollen throughout its course by new tributaries and by the seepages of its banks; it rellects the Jite through which it llows, taking colour from the shores; the shores modify it, but its power and volume descend from distan! headwaters and affiuents far up stream ...

The literary mind is strengthencd and nurtured, is influenced and mastered, by the accumulated riches of literature» (3-4,5).

10 Constante Gonzúle: Gmba

with ali kinds of allusions, covert or overt quotations, influences and echoes. As Barthes proved, a text may appear to be the spontaneous and transparent exprcssion of a writer's intcntions, but must necessarily contain elements of other texts: 2) a text is actualized through the process of reading, and that actualization depends to a large degree on the enrichment of the textual material under scrutiny with ali the readings of other texts which the reader, consciously or unconsciously, inevitably brings to it (Still and Worton 1-2, 19). As Robert Scholes says, «reading consists of bringing texts together. It is a constructive activity, a kind of writing.» (6) And the reader's acquaintance with sorne text, or sorne critica! or interpretive theory, even if they are unknown to the author, may result in a fresh reading, as both the discourse of the author and that of the reader are inherently dialogical and intertextual. Each reader inevitably finds in or imposes on a new text pieccs or segments from other texts, e ven if they were written in a Iater pcriod. Barthes and Borges emphasized the circularity of rnemory in reading, which allows the reader to see a texl lhrough the Iensc of ali and any familiar texts, to place each new text in relation to old ones, and the hest way toread a text is by bringing it together wi th the traces of other texts in our memories (Scholes 21, 22). When we read we not only construct a text through its relations with othertexts, we also «construct» ourselves in the sense that we shape the text of our consciousness and we write ourselvcs as we link our readings. Reading is thus a constructive activity that works as a cuJTent that moves in two opposite directions: when we read we not only rewrite the text of the work within the text of our lives (Barthes), we «bring the text home, into our thoughts and lives, into our judgements and deeds» (Scholes 6), but we also read -and write- the book of our sel ves into the text in front of us.

This paper was suggested by the many similarities I found in Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hwzter ( 1940) and Jerzy Kosinski 's Being There ( 1971 ). Although I have no incontrovertible evidence of a direct influence of McCullers on Kosinski, it is likely that he was somehow acquainted with McCullers' most famous novel. He carne to American literature from another language and culture - he flcd Poland and cntered the United States in 1957, at the age of 24- at a time when McCullers was one of America's most popular writers. He might at least have seen Robert Ellis Miller's 1968 film version of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. In any case the parallels I posit between The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Being There rest on an intertextual basis, a basis of resemblance or coincidence, and not necessarily of direct influence, as, for whatever reason and from whatcver source, Kosinski actually follows a path previously travelled by Carson McCullers. This striking resemblance points up the continuity in the literary depiction of human types, problems and themes. The methods of approach can widely differ, but no single author has the monopoly of thought or is entitled to an exclusive articulation of any single theme. And the procedure of comparison, and sometimes of contrast, that I follow can be claimed as a perfectly viable alternative in critica! anal y sis. As Scholes says, «comparison and contrast is not just sorne sort of academic reflex but a fundamental part of the reading process - which is to say, the thinking process.» (80)

Fi/ling the Blank Page: A Comparison of Car.wm McC11/lers' .. . 11

The complexities of literary study spring not only from the uniqueness and intricacy of

individual works but also from the fruitful and often puzzling interplay among them. In my view, The Heart /.\·a Lonely Hunter and Being There can be considered to

be variations on the same theme: the tendency of the individual confined in the empty

prison of his own subjectivity to constitute himself by projecting on and identifying with other individuals, to construct reality in relation to his hidden wishes and fears. The two central characters, John Singer and Chance respectively, share not only

psychological features but narrative and symbolic functions as well. They are made into idols and leaders by the other characters who become their admiring satelli tes.

In spite of their thematic and struc tural similarities, the two novels differ

significantly in mood and technique. In The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter the narration is subjective and the narrator is throughout highly sympathetic to the characters, whereas the narrator of Being There is always detached and distanced and never prone to

introspection or sympathy. The characters of McCullers' novel are foil of emotions and noble ideals and keep the capacity to dream and to search for love. Those in Kosinski 's satiric novella. in contrast, lack interior emotional li fe and are more replete with cocktails

and televis ion consumption than with ideals or illusions. In Being There we detect the author's evident intention of satirizing the shallowness and emptiness of contemporary American society, but beneath the satiric purpose there is a more general meaning for

the reader to abstract. McCullers' novel is set in a provincial small town in the Deep South in the late

l 930s, when the menace of a second World War is increasingly voiced over the radio.

The action of Being There takes place in cosmopolitan New York in the late l 960s during the Vietnam War. The cold war is at its peak and sorne of those who were soldiers or officers in the World War are now «soldiers of peace» at the United Nations. In both

novels we perceive the anguish of the contemporary individual, cut off from God by disbelief and from other individuals by his narcissistic tendencies. God has been displaced by science, traditional morality by materialism, stable beliefs and guiding principies by

relativism, even nihilism. The mood is one of spiritual barrenness, insecurity and ins tabilily, both in the private and the public sphere. The individual continues to be the te leological animal who gravitates toward myths and ideals, but the myths and ideals of

the twentieth-century individual cannot be detached from his subjectivity, and his idols

are empty and func tion as mirrors which reflect back a narcissistically projected image

of the subject. In both The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Being There the central character has

a double dimension: a «real» one -the real Singer and Chance as they are known only to the reader- and one of illusion and dream- the fantastic transformation to which their

admirers subject them. The idealization of Singer and Chance takes different modalities,

depending on the idea each of thei r adm irers conceives of them. Both of them occupy a central position in the respective nove ls only insofar as they constitute the hub in which the dreams of the others converge, and their roles depend on what they mean to their

12 Constante Gonzá/ez Groba

satellites, rather than on their essence or identity. The reader perceives both Singer and Chance as static characters who remain unaffected by the others, in spite ofthe influence they unwittingly exert on them.

One of the character istics shared by Singer and Chance is their unknown mysterious origin. Singer carne to the small Southern town a few years ago, and nobody knows anything about his origin, his previous Jife or his ethnic background. Chance's mother died when he was born, and nobody would tell him who his father was, and he has no family. The Iawyers in charge of the state of the deceased man he has been working for have no record of him at ali, and he can produce no personal identification, no official document with name and address, or age. Members of the staff of the Soviet embassy produce a computer anal y sis of Chance which proves it «impossible to deter­mine in any way whatsoever his ethnic background or to ascr ibe his accent to any single community in the entire United States!.» (95) It is precisely Singer's and Chance's aura of mystery and indeterminacy that constitutes the busis of their principal effect on the structure of the respective novels as a whole. lmmersed in his thoughts about his absent friend Antonapoulos, the solitary John Singer appears to have an intense inner Iife which, together with his deaf-muteness, gives him an air of wisdom which makes hirn attractive to the alienated characters who people McCullers' novel. This is what the observant Biff Brannon notices in the second chapter of The Heart is a Lonely

Htmter:

The fellow was downright uncanny. People felt themselves watching him even befare they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things nobody el se had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed befare. He did not seem quite human (25-26).3

The fact that Singer and Chance are unknown to their admirers and cannot reciprocate them -the former is a deaf-mute and the Jatter is mentally retarded- makes them unobjectionable, which is precisely why one of the plutocrats in Washington D. C. propases Chance as the next candidate for vice-president: «Gardiner has no background! And so he's not and cannot be objectionablc to anyone!.» (104)4

3. Thc passagc contains an echo of I Corinthians, 2: 9: «But as it is written, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard. neither has the human heart thought of what God has prepared for those who !ove Him"».

4. Roben Ziegler makes an accurate assessment of Chance as the ideal politician: «What makes Chance so eligible, so <lesirable as a politician, is the insubstantial, gratuicous quality that his name itsel f suggesrs. Like a party platform that is drafted to say both everything and nothing, and whose purpose is to avoid specifics an<l thus not alienate const ituents, Chance emerges as thc ideal candidate, who is whatever onc desires, the empty page on which an electorate can inscribe its diverse messages» (2).

Fi/ling the Blank P11[!,e: A Compariso11 of Car.wn McC11/lers' ... 13

Singer and Chance function as blank empty pagcs which their admirers fill according to their respective psychological makeups and deepest aspirations, as blank surfaces on which they project and writc themselves, rather than regarding the true persons in thcm. In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Mick Kelly can only imagine God as «Mr Singer with a long white sheet around him» (108, emphasis mine), and in Being There the Russian spies actually codename Chance «blank page» (95).5 Singer and Chance are simultaneously el ose - their admirers ha ve easy access to them - and distant­they cannot communicate: Singer is isolated by his deaf-muteness and his exclusive devotion to his friend Antonapoulos, and Chance by his radical innocence and mental retardation. Since they cannot possibly make lhemselves known, Singer and Chance remain inconcrete and indeterminate, and manifest a persistent resistance to definition. Thus EE, the major admirer of Chance, «noticed the meticulous care he took to insure that nothing he said to her or to anyone else was definite enough to reveal what he thought of her or of anyone or, indeed, of anything.» (59)

The admirers who write the blank pages of Chance and Singer all search for, and dream of, sorne kind of security, some vital (non-existent) center for their lives. Singer and Chance are constantly changed and reshaped by the vehicles which manifest lhem, be they their admircrs or the words the latter use to represent the former. As is the case with all the artistic representations of the whale Ishmael searches and studies in Moby­Dick, ali the constructions and phantasies about Singer and Chance hit somewhere off the unreachable mark. To put it in Lacanian terms, Singer and Chance could very well be representations of the ungraspablc phenomenon, the pursuits and verbal constructions of thcir admirers, the enactment of language and desire reaching after a hidden, alienated, yet somehow fam iliar reality. The construction of Singer and Chance as idols rests on the basis of difference - they are the opposite of what each admirer is. and contain the promise of what each one of them lacks-; they are made into the presence that is going to fill all the gaps, to substitute plenitude for the permanent lack that originates and constitutes thc desiring subject. And it seems that Singer and Chance are more the product than thc source of the desires of thcir admirers.

It is the indcfiniteness of Singer and Chance that opens the way to so many intcrpretations and variations as those of the music wi th which Mick Kelly associates Singer. Singer and Chance are nothing, but they are everything: their identity (rather, thcir non-identity) is multiplc and so versatile that it promiscs thc satisfaction of the most varied illusions and needs of so many admirers. This is the psychological mechanism of projection whereby the subject perceives externa! reality and responds to it according to his interests, habits, emotional states, expectations. etc/' ln this respect.

5. In an interview. Kosinski said that one ofhis working titles for BeÍllM 111ere was precisely B /1111k Page (Plimpron and L:.mdcsman 200).

6. This is a traditional pre-Freu<lian use of projcction wh ich has survived. Projection in Freud is nor a simple idcntification of the other person with oneself and it always involvcs the

14 Constal/fe Gonzále::: Groba

Singer and Chance function like a Rorschach ora T.A.T. projective test, in which the subject is confronted by relative unstructured situations and ambiguous stimuli. The subject tested interprcts the stirnu li in accordance with his personality structure. and he projccts what he is as well as what he refuses to be, which allows the specialist toread traits of the analyzend's character, as well as patterns of organization of his ernotions and behavior (Laplanche and Pontalis 350, 354). Benjamin Rand sees Chance as another businessrnan conccrned about high taxes, political exploitation, and misunderstanding by the general public. Concerned about his approaching dcath, Rand sees in Chance the self-acceptance and equanirnity that he lacks. For Rand's wife EE, starved of love and sex, Chance is so understanding. loving and sexy that she cannot keep her mind nor her hands off hirn. For the Presiden t. in serious trouble because of the state of the economy, Chance is the one who offers sound econornic ad vice. In The Heart is a Lonely Himter Mick Kelly secs S inger as the only one who can understand her inner turrnoil. This troubled adolescent relates Singer with the snow she drearns about in the torrid Georgia surnrner and with the music which haunts her mind. Benedict Cope land, the black doc­tor obsessed with racial oppression, believes Singer to be a Jew, which expresses his longing for identiticalion with members of oppressed races. To Copeland Singer is the ideal white man and his face resembles that of Spinoza, the Jcwish philosopher whose work Copcland reads avidly. For Jake Blount Singer is Irish, and the only one who listens to and sympathizes with the muddled Marxism that Blount preaches. The characters who gravitate around Singer and Chance see in them the possibi lity offulfilling and thus bcing liberated from their des ires. Singer and Chance appcar to be free from the interna! divisions and the imperfection expressed by desire. It is as ifthey existed in a state of timeless being and enjoyed a peace -the rnindless peace that fills Chance's chesl at the end of BeinJ? There - which is unattainable in the process of becoming that constitutes the subject and makes him an othcr to himself. Singer and Chance are the love objects of their narcissistic admirers, who in this case make the objects of their admiration represen! sorne aspects of their projective ideal selves which neither the deaf-mute nor the ex-gardener have.7 They are empty and silent , and al the same time pregnant with infinite meanings and suggestions. Being creations of others, and each the absence of a presence, makes Singer and Chance so powerful as images (Rothschild 62). In this respecl. they appear to be reincarnations of Moby Dick, the whitc whale on whose shiny blank surface each member of the Pequod's crew projects his own meaning. The admirers of Singer and Chance do basically the same thing as the pursuers of the

throwing out o f what one refuses either to rccognize in onese lf or to be oneself (Laplanchc and Pontalis 352, 354).

7. McC ullcrs cxplains the situation in her outline for The Heart l.1· a úmely Hulller: «Each one of thesc four people crcates his understanding of the mute from his own desires ... Each one of thcse persons makes the mute the repository for his most personal feelings and ideas» ( «Author's Outline» 137).

Filli11g tlze Bla11k Pnge: A Co111pariso11 of Car.Hm McCul/ers ' .. . 15

elusive monster imagined by Melville when cach one of them interprets the goldcn

doubloon, itsclf emblematic of the mythic whi te whale, in his own image, always depending on thc psychology and the socio-cultural environment of each observer. The sol ipsism professed by Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick- « ... and this round gold [the

doubloon] is but the image of the rounder g lobe, which, like a magician 's glass, to cach and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self» (541) -characterizes the individuals who gravitate around Singer and Chance, whose plasticity makes them

liablc to infin ite transformations. In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter this attitude is sharcd by practically ali the population of the town, which produces the most varied readings of the polyvalent text constituted by John Singer:

So thc rumours about the mute were rich and varied. The Jews said that he was a Jcw. The merchants along the main street claimed he had received a large

legacy and was a very rich man. lt was whispcred in one browbeaten textilc union that the mute was an organizcr for the C. l. O. A lonc Turk who had roamed into the town years ago ... claimed passionately to his wife that thc mute was

Turkish. He said that when he spoke his language the mute understood. ( 177)

There is a similar episode in Being There when, during a reception, the Soviet

ambassador speaks to Chance in Russian and is convinced that he understands (70).

Since both Singer and Chance are incapable of showing the ir disagreement because of their respecti ve handicaps, the people who relate with them systematically assume that they agree with them.8 Most of the scarce occasions in which Chance speaks he does it

about the only reality he knows: the seasonal changes, the productivity, the growth and the lending of gardens. But his listeners fill bis literal words with metaphorical meaning, in a similar manner as they fill his person with non-existen! qualities.

If readers -admirers are constituted differently, different readers- admirers project different traits on the sarne text. But Singer and Chance are each more than a mysterious rext oran enigma to be deciphered from different perspectives. They are converted into

unwitting gods. Wrongly assuming that C hance is intentionally trying to act and sound above the heads of the «Yideots», the chairman of the board of the BBC introduces the famous quotation from Corio/anus: «lt's what they want. after ali: 'a god to pwzish, not

a man of their i11firmity '» (73 ). In her outline of The Heart is a Lo11e/y Hullter Carson

McCullers pointed to the following secondary themes:

8. The same mechanism is al work in the penultimate episode of Kosinski ·s Sreps ( 1968). whcre the narrator had travellcd to another country to satisfy his curiosity about the expcrience of revolution: «As 1 did not understand their language, I played a deaf-mute, and l played my part wel l. Each group 1 joined daimed me as its own, handing me weapons and insignia as if convinced that it was the most natural thing in the world for a spastic to fight for the futurc they envisíoned for their country» ( 143).

16 Constante Gonzále::. Graba

( 1) There is a deep need in man to express himself by creating sorne unifying principie or God . A personal God created by a man is a rellection of himself and in substance this God is most often inferior to his creator. (2) In a disorganized society these individual Gods or principies are likely to be chimerical and fantustic. (136)

Deprived of the stable patterns of meuning supplied in previous epoches and in traditional cultures by the myths and the beliefs accepted by all, the uprooted characters, typical of our times, who people the two novels under analysis ha ve to create their own myths and idols from their own subjectivity. Significantly, none of the four admirers of Singer is a dedicated practitioner of any religious denomination, and as early as in chapter two Biff Brannon, who wonders why Blount should choose a deaf-mute to unburden himself, suggests a possible connection between Singer and Christ:

Why? Because in sorne men it is in them to give up everything personal at sorne

time, before it ferments and poisons - throw it to sorne human being or some human idea. They have to. In some men it is in them - The tcxt is «Ali men scek for Thee.» (32)9

Mick Kelly is the one who comes closest to recognizing the deification of Singer: «Everybody in the past few years knew there wasn ' t any real God. When she thought of what she used to imagine was God she could only see Míster Singer with a long white sheet around him. God was silent - maybe that was why she was reminded» (108). John Singer is not only a silent god, but a false one as well: he fails his followers when they need him most, as when Mick asks him for advice about taking ajob which is going to take her out of school; he «listens» to them only to mitigate his own loneliness, and never tells them anything when he leaves the town to visit Antonapoulos in the asylum. Neither Singer nor Chance has the capacity to understand what he is told nor is either of them interested in the least, and each is equully powerless to satisfy the demands placed on him. In this sense , The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Being There are simil ar to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, where the ac lion centers around the efforts of severa) solitary and grotesque individuals to establish an intimate relationship with George Willard. Anderson's characters are also in search of channels for self-expression, in need of a relationship that allows them to recovera lost collective harmony. Thcy are

9. BilTis here remembering a text his wifcAlicc hasjust read aloud. lt is the New Testamenl srory of Simon and Andrew, who opl to follow Chr ist: « ... an<l in the morning, rising up a grcat while before day, He went out, an<l departed into a solitary p lace, and therc prayed. And Simon and they that were wirh Him followed after Him. And when they had found Him. they said unto Him, "Ali men seek for Thee'"» (The Hear1 l.1· a Lonely Hunter 3 1 ).

Filli11g 1he B/ank Page: A Companson of Car.wu1 McCuller.~· ... 17

so alienated that. rather than turn to one another. they search for Wi llard, who cannot understand them and is not going to be with them very long. Besides. his absorption in his own dreams and problems incapacitates him for bearing such a heavy burden.

This proccss of idolization of Singer and Chance confirms the deeply rootcd nccessity of the individual lo crcatc a god who makes life meaningful hy allowing transcendencc. IL <loes not matter too much if that god is false. if he is thc absolute silence which does not understand or communicate anything. if he is more of an absence than a prcsenee. It is precisely their silence and remoteness that make Singer and Chance prone to idol ization: their lack of concretion and dcfinition makcs them godlike. The attitudcs of the a<lmirers of Singer and Chance reflect the contemporary philosophical conception that the systems of value and meaning do not exist objectively but only insofar as the individual perceives them or, rather, projects them on to the externa] world, no mattcr how strong the perccption of that meaning and value as exterior and

ohjective. The clecl ion of a deaf-mute anda moran as ideal confidants and objects of desire

is both the product and the manifestation ofthe admirers' in terna! conflic ts. They seem to prefcr the imaginary ami the chimerical - their constructions of Singer and Chance -to the unsatisfactory aclualities of their livcs. Thus in The Heart is a lonely Hw1ter Mick Kelly makes the impersonal Singer into an ideal father and refuses to !et her real father. always sympathetic and hungry for communication, into her «inside room.» 10

Thcir failure to un<lerstand and communicatc makcs Singer and Chance forever mysterious and ungraspable. and thus preferablc to concrete objec ts or ideals which. like the cigarettes Mick smokes, fade away relatively soon and !cave the subject fmstrated and dissatisJied. There is a resistance to eonfront the ideal with the real, the «inside room» with thc «Olltside room.»

Communication with Singer ami Chance is «perfcct» and ideal; it never fails simply because it <loes not exist, because their admirers are happy with the mere illusion of communication. T hc fact that Singer is a deaf-mute and Chance a moron allows thc ir satellites to sati sfy contradictory impulses. Singer and Chance never contradict or offend their admirers; they never resistor oppose what the latter say, think or do'. The ideal of the admirers is in both cases a form of monologism, in the sense that in their interaction with Singer and Chance they want to impose a discourse which <loes not suffer interferencc from the alíen intcntions of a real interlocutor. The writers of the blank

1 O. Beca use shc has no room of her own, Mick Kclly bui lds an imaginary one and <livi<les her cxistem:e into two rooms: «With her it was likc there was two places - thc inside room and the outsidc room. School an<l thc family and thc things that happcncd cvery <lay were in the outside room. Mr Singer was in both rooms. Forcign c.:ountries and plans and music.: were in the insidc room. The songs she thought about wcrc there. And thc sympho ny .. . The inside room was a very prívate place. Shc c.:ould be in the middle o f a house full ofpeople and still fee l likc she was locked up by hersc] f,, ( 145-46).

18 Crm.1·w111e Go11~cíle;; Groba

pages Singer ami Chance are authors who deny thc individual s ubjectivity of their characters by imposing themselves on it, a practice which is the equivalent of totalitarianism in the political sphcrc (Holquist 34). 11 The admirers of S inger and, to a lcsser degree, the people captivated by Chance, conform to Dembo's descript ion of the monologist who makcs the «thou» into an object:

A monologist, as we ali know, is somebody who talks too much and never li stens. Babbler, orator, or narrator out of touch with his audience, he is anyonc

for whom speech is not a means of mutual understanding or communication but the opportunity to perfonn, to use the language for its own sake or to creatc an impression - in s hort, for any purpose that docs not involve dia logue. Pcople

who speak from an obsess ion are monologists: so are those speaking at cross­purposes. (3)

Singer and Chance provide their readers with inner freedom, with the opportunity to pcrform an act of self-creation through the uncharted human a nd psychic territory of these b lank pages. These writcrs of blank pagcs do something si milar to what, according

to Clara Mucci. in tcrprctcrs oftexts frequently do. They perform «an act of appropriation and cxpropriation of a tcxt, of a textual body that s hould be simply left open to speak with its own voice. » Interpretation is oftcn an act of intrusion and cven abuse on the

text. as the inte rpretcr is cagcr to erase the otherness in the tex.t. A nd the blank pagc is thc onc which tells the most mysterious story, the place of ali possible meanings (Mucci 23. 28). With s uch ohjects of admiration ami des irc as S inger and C hance, the

individuality of the subjcct rcmains protected and safc. with no obstacles to develop and cxpand. Thc admirers can exert complete control without any danger of leaving the se lf compromised. Rather than being enraged by Chance "s voycuristic impotence, EE is happy to be liberated from the burden of accountability to him as partner: « You make me free. I revea] mysclf to myself and I am drenchcd ancl purgcd.» (87 ) Both Singer and

Chance play into the hands of that tcndcncy of the individual to rcsist union and communication in ordcr to protec t his subjective reality: ar thc samc ti me, the ill usory

relationship with Singcr and Chance allows their admirers to satisfy the forcefu l impul­se toward transcendence and communication.

lf talki ng to Singcr and Chance is. in point of fact , no d iffe rcnt from talki ng to onesclf. McCullers and Kosi nski , e ither consciously or unconsciously, seem to

be saying that whe n lo ving or cummunicating, the individua l is real ly getting in contact, not with the permancntly e lu sive other. but witb himse lf through the former. Bcing radically scparatc frorn others , the indi vidual is incapable of seeing the

1 1. Thc control is so powerfu l that in Bei11g There EE changes Chance "s name to Chaunccy GarJiner (30 )

Fil/in?, the Bla11k Paxe: A Compariso11 of Carson McCullers ' ... 19

other exceptas a mirror reflection of himself, as this passage from The Heart is a Lonely Hu11ter seems to suggest:

The eyes of his fricnd [Antonapoulos] were moist and dark and in thcrn he f Singer] saw the little rectangled pictures of himself that he had watched a thousand times ( 194 ).

In Kosinski the self al so nceds projection for its configuration. As the protagonist'S mistress says in Steps:

The11 , ali you 11eed me for is to provide a stage on which you can project

and view .vourself. mu/ see how your discarded experiences become alive again when 1hey ajfect me. Am I right ~ You don 'r want me to !ove you; ali you want is forme to aba11do11 mvself to the dreams a11d fantasies which you inspire in me ...

(131)

In the sarne novel, the protagonist near the end makes possible a successful atfair when he preten<ls to be a deaf-mutc so that another woman can relate to him. By scparating himself from the verbal aspect of language the protagonist extricates himself from thc obligations of social interaction an<l the <lcmands of cornmunication.

Thc characters in McCullers and Kosinski conform to Christopher Lasch 's description of the conternporary individual who is inescapably, even unconsciously, narcissistic, incapable of seeing the world other than «as a rnirror of himself and has no interest in externa! events exceptas they throw back a reflection of his own image.» (Lasch 96) Refcrences to mirrors are abundant in Being There, always in relation to Chance who likes hirnself in mirrors. When he watches television, «the figure of the TV screen looke<l like his own reflection in a mirror. » ( 11) Television, which is prescnt throughout Being There -McCullers ·novel belongs to the days of the radio-, constitutes an adcquate symbol for the narcissisrn of a stupeficd society.12 During his appcarance at the This Evening show, Chance «was astonished that tclevision could portray itsclf; carneras watchcd themselves and, as thcy watched, they televised a program ... Of ali the manifold things thcre were in all the world -trecs, grass, flowers, tclephones, ra­dios. elevators - only TV cons tantly held upa mirror to its own neither solid nor fluid

I 2. According to Christopher Lasch, one of the social influcnces that are bringing a narcissistic type of personality organization into increasingly greater prominence is "tbc prolifcration of visual and audial images in the 'socicty of the spectac lc.' We livc in a swirl of imagcs and echoes that arrest experience and p lay it back in slow motion. Cameras and recordi ng machines not only transcribe exp~rience but alter its quality. giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chambcr. a hall of mirrnrs" (96-97).

20 Consta/lft' Gm1~ále~ Groba

face.» (52) lt is precisely their inescapable narcissism thaldistinguishcs men from plants, since «therc is no mirror in which the plant can recogni1:e its face.» (9)

There is a further importan! structural point sharcd by the two novels: each of the idols is, in turn, dependent 011 anothcr ido! (ncithcr is the center of the structure he apparcntly govems), and this is unknown to their admirers. Singer's object of devotion is the deaf-mutc Antonapoulos, totally opposed to the former: Singer is slim. active, disciplined and ascetic. whereas Antonapoulos is obese, lazy, s loppy and fond of food and masturbation. With his all-devouring orality, Antonapoulos makes the ideal object for a rclationship in which Singer always gives everything. With the mental, sexual and spiritual development of a seven-year-old ( «Outline» 149), Antonaponlos is totally indifferent to everything Singer wants to sharc with him. Thc truth is that, deep down, Singer docs not sccm tocare and the fac t that Antonapoulos cannot reciprocate plays to his advantage -he can persuade himself that Antonapoulos understands him. His lack of knowledge of Antonapoulos' interior allows Singer to deceivc himself, to attribute to his ido] ali the qualities that he wishes. Thus in the chcss games he plays with his fccble-minded friend, it is Singer who moves both thc white and thc black pieces. It is a relationship in which the loved onc is nothing but an externa! stimulus for a love which cxists only insidc the lover. Singer's attraction to such a rcpulsive pcrson would secm to be detrimental to the very credibility of the novel, but McCullcrs is trying to make one of her fundamental points: that thc qualities of the bel o ved are a mere creation ofthe subjcctivity ofthe lover. This conception oflove rclationships, dramatized in one way or another in ali of McCullers' novels, is explicitly voiced through the narrator of The Ballad of the Sad Café:

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most ontlandish people can be the stimulus for !ove .. . Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone elsc -but that does not affect the cvolution of his Jove one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a ]ove which is wild, cxtravagant, and beautiful as the poi son lilics of thc sw:unp .. . Therefore. thc value and quality of any ]ove is deterrnined solely by the Iover himself. (33-34)

Things takc an cven more extreme turn in Being There, where Chance\ object of admiration is the television, which he consumes as avidly as uncritically, because it fits his proverbial passivity. If Chance makes no demands on others, tclevision makes no demands on him eithcr. This major symbol of the emptiness and fragmentation of our postmodern age both relieves his isolation and cuts him off frum a world he is incapable of re lating to. This remuval makes Chance himself a tclevision screen for other people 's projcctions (Klinkowitz 96). Chance derives ali his realily from the images he sees on TV and he deals successfülly with different kinds of people by simply imitaling what he has seen on the tube. From tclevision he learns to relate Lo people, and he wins the affection of EE by «repcating to her part of her own scntences. a practice he had

Fil/ing the Blank Page: A Comparison of Carso11 McCullers ' .. . 21

observed on TV.» (34) By being a nobody. Chance succeeds as the object ofthe affections of others. With thc TV on, a mcntally sterile Chance becomcs «alive», he can see himself and react to that false identity reflccted back to him from the screen. With the TV off. there is only ernptiness, lifelessness:

He turned on the TV, sat down on the bed, and flicked the channel changer severa! limes. Country houses, skyscrapcrs, newly built apartment houses, churches shot across the screen. He turned the set off. The image died; only a small blue dot hung in the center of the screen, as if forgotten by the rest of the world to which it belongcd; then it too disappearcd. The screen filled with grayness; it might have been a slab of stonc (27-28).

In a similar manner. when the death of Antonapoulos deprives Singer of the mirror in which he has been seeing hirnself. he is left so empty and purposeless that he can only find peace in thc non-being of death which will idcntify him with Antonapoulos. Television is the perfect medium, at once private and impersonal, for a pcrmancntly <done Chance, incapable of relating to anyonc or cvcn to himself. In the same way as Chance fears no interfercnce or threat to his self-image, Singer runs no risk of being misunderstood or contradicted by his moronic Greek idol.

If Singcr and Chance are blank pages filled with meaning by thc characters who read / write them, their meaning equally changes according to the nature of the threads of the text of the self that reads the text in which they appear.13 In the samc way as the characters in McCullers' and Kosinski's respective artistic projcctions recreate themselves through thcir projection on their objects of desire, the result of the critic's interaction with the work of fiction may be a form of «autobiography.» Criticism is a sclf-retlexive activity, as the page shimmers and becomes a mirror of the critic, of his disposition, of his hidden fears and desires, of his readings of other texts, even of his favorite critica! trends. Both McCullers and Kosinski conceived of fiction very much as an imaginative act of projection on the part of the author. In thc introduction to her play The Square Root of Wo11de1ful ( 1958) Carson McCullcrs recognizes «man y of the compulsions that made me write the play» and says that «a writer wri tes out of sorne inward compulsion to transform his own experience (much of it is unconscious) into the universal and symbolical. The themcs the artist chooses are always deeply perso­nal.» (viii) Kosinski also perceived fiction as the art of imaginative projection. For the Polish-born novelist the best fiction is autobiographical and experiential not only of the author but of the reader as well. In an intcrview Kosinski stated his belief that the work of fiction «acquires rneaning only in the process of bein·g decodcd by another psyche,»

13. For the self as text, sce Scholes 2 ff.

22 Co11stante Gonzále: Groba

that «any act of reading - indeed the act of reading anything - is an act of activating the projccting abilicy of the sel f.» (Teicholz 71 , 85)14 Like every reader of fiction, the readers of Kosinski and McCullcrs confront a situation not vcry different from that of the characters who project themselves on Singer and Chance. Apart from the raw fact that every tcxt ends with a blank page. we can metaphorically assert that every text is at Jeast in pai1 a blank page, and we do not know for sure how much we get from it and how much we give, or write on it. Thc task of reading is an attempt Lo reconstitute the fragments of a text «into a whole that says at least as much about the reader as it says about the fiction itself.» (Bruss 168) And Kosinski said that he trusted the reader and thought him «perfectly capable of fílling in the blank spaces, of supplying what I purposefully withdrew.» (Plimpton and Landcsman 206) In the final analysis, it is impossible to say or determine exactly who and what Singer and Chance are , or what they mean. and the version of the reader or the critic is at least in part another fiction, j ust one more attempt to inscribe mcaning in the permanently elusive blank page of the world -and of our lives.

WORKS CITED

BELLAMY, JOE DAVID, ed. The New Fictio11: lnten •ieu:.1· with lnnovative American

Writers. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1974. BRUSS, PAUL. Victims: Textual Strategies i11 Rece11t American Ficlion. Lewisburg:

Bucknell UP. 1981. DEMBO, L. S. The Mrmological Jew: A literary Study. Madison: The U ofWisconsin

P, 1988. HOLQUIST, MICHAEL. Dialogism: Bakhtin a11d lzi.1· World. London: Routledge, 1990. KLINKOWITZ, JEROME. Literary Disruptions: The Making of a Post-Colltemporary

American Fictio11. 2nd. ed. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1980. KOSINSKI, JERZY. Bei11g There. l 971. London: Black Swan, 1983. -----. Steps. 1968. NewYork: Grave Press, 1997. LAPLANCHE, J. and J. B. PONTALIS. The language of Psychomwlysis. London:

Karnac Books, 1988. LASCH. CHRISTOPHER. The Culture of Narcissism: American lije in an Age of

Di111i11ishi11g Expectations. New York: Warner Books, 1979.

14. Thc intc rview, by Daniel J. Cahill, was origi nally publishe<l in 711e Norrh American Rei•ieir (Spring 1973): 55-66. In annther interview. given to Klinkowitz. Kosinski said that «ffliction assaults the reader <lirectly as if saying: It is about you. You are actually creating this situation when you are reading about it: in a way you are staging itas an event ofyourown life» (Klinkowitz 100: Bcllamy 149). Thc interview was originally published in Fiel ion lnterna1ío11al (1973): 31-48.

Filling the Bla11k Page: A Compari.wm of Car.1·1111 McCullers' ...

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TEICHOLZ, TOM, ed. Co11rersatio11s u·ith Jer~y Kosinski. Jackson: UP ofM ississippi , 1993.

ZIEGLER, ROBERT. «Electing the Video Self: A Note on Being There,» Notes 011

Contempomry Litem1ttre 19 ( 1989): 2-3.